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Quotes about poetry

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Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.
Jean Cocteau1889–1963On Invisibility
- Morality
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834Kubla Khan (1816), Kubla KhanIn context
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread:
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drank the milk of Paradise.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834Kubla Khan (1816), Kubla KhanIn context
- Genius
To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.
Colette1873–1954Paris From My Window (1944)
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
Countee Cullen1903–1946Yet Do I Marvel (1925)In context
- Race
Science is the poetry of reality.
Richard Dawkinsborn 1941The Enemies of Reason, “Slaves to Superstition” [1.01], 13 August 2007, timecode 00:38:16ff
- Science
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
Emily Dickinson1830–1886Letter to T. W. Higginson (1870); Letters (1958) p. 474, no. 342a
If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
Emily Dickinson1830–1886Letter to T. W. Higginson (1870); Letters (1958) p. 474, no. 342a
Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.
Denis Diderot1713–1784On Dramatic Poetry (1758)
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in the case of poetry, it’s the exact opposite!
Paul Dirac1902–1984
I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.
Bob Dylanborn 1941
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965“Philip Massinger”, a biographical essay, in The Sacred Wood (1920)
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), Part II
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965“Dante” (1929), in Selected Essays (1932), p. 238
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965